We’ll be taking a newsletter off to celebrate Leap Day (the 29th) and Chicago’s 187th birthday (the 4th). We’ll be back on Tuesday the 5th.
Below are six trivia questions. If you’d like to participate, you can either reply to this e-mail or submit your answers via Google Forms by using the button below. You can find our rules and guidelines by following this link.
1) It’s almost (Augie?) March, and so we should remember Humboldt’s Gift, a novel by WHAT author? It won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and contributed to its author winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.
2) John Osborne’s 1956 play Look Back in Anger, Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 play A Taste of Honey, and Karl Reisz’s 1960 film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning are generally upheld as examples of WHAT two-word type of drama? A borrowed term from an article title by David Sylvester, it refers to an object that, on stage or set, may silently indicate the impoverished circumstances of the characters.
3) John Lithgow, Patrick Ryecart and Pip Torrens are three of the very few actors who reprised their Season 2 roles in Season 3 of WHAT television show that began airing in 2016?
4) Argentine writer Mariana Enríquez was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize for her psychological horror short-story collection Los peligros de fumar en la cama—or, in its translation by Megan McDowell, “The Dangers of” doing WHAT?
5) In football, a “flea flicker” play seeks to trick the defense into thinking a run is occurring, so that the runner can lateral the ball back to the quarterback to attempt a pass. University of Illinois coach Bob Zuppke is credited with debuting the flea flicker in a 1925 game against Penn. NAME the player who galloped in the touchdown on that play.
6) “Get a clue” and tell us WHAT connects each of this newsletter’s answers.
Trivia Newsletter CCII Recap
1) Idaho (ID), Wichita (TX), Glens (NY), Great (MT), Twin (ID), Cuyahoga (OH), Cedar (IA), Post (ID), Menomonee (WI), Klamath (OR), and Tinton (NJ) are all words that come before WHAT word in the names of certain American cities?
The missing word in each of these cities is FALLS. Missing in this list were Sioux Falls and International Falls, as we thought they might be a bit too helpful.
Frostbite Falls, Minnesota is a fictional location purportedly based upon International Falls, MN. Frostbite Falls is the home of WHAT TWO TITULAR CHARACTERS from a television show that aired from 1959 to 1964? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
2) “The sedge has withered from the lake, / And no birds sing,” a line from John Keats’s ballad “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” evokes an image of a ruined environment and thus inspired the title of WHAT 1962 work?
The work here is Rachel Carson’s SILENT SPRING.
The book’s most famous chapter is its first. We’ve never been very good at pacing these recaps, and we continue that trend by quoting the chapter in its entirety:
THERE WAS ONCE a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.
Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.
There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.
On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs—the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit. The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.
In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams. No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.
. . .This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know. What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain.
3) Of the works generally considered to be the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,” only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains largely intact. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was most recently destroyed, likely by earthquakes in the fourteenth century. WHICH wonder was destroyed most recently before the destruction of the Mausoleum? Also destroyed by earthquakes, its site was used for the Citadel of Qaitbay on the Mediterranean coast.
This is the LIGHTHOUSE AT ALEXANDRIA. Here’s an engraving of the lighthouse by Philip Galle that resides in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam:
4) The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business, a work by Christopher Leonard published in 2014, focuses on WHAT heavyweight company founded in 1935 and based in Springdale, Arkansas?
This is TYSON FOODS. “Heavyweight” was a clue to get you to connect the answer with heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson.
We were Googling around, trying to find something to say about Tyson Foods, and we thought these two results next to each other made for a nice “shot, chaser”:
5) NAME the only city that, with respect to the 2023 MLB season and the 2023-24 NFL season, hosted both a World Series game and an NFL playoff game.
This is ARLINGTON, TEXAS, as the Texas Rangers and Dallas Cowboys both play there.
We wonder how often the “Texas Rangers Hall of Fame” (located in the Rangers’ stadium) is confused with the “Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum,” which is located in Waco and celebrates the Texas law enforcement agency.
6) This newsletter’s answers, or parts thereof, make up names (or part of names) that surround WHAT, which has an area of approximately 43,000 acres?
This is WASHINGTON, D.C. Each of our answers connected to a suburb/municipality just outside of DC: Falls for Falls Church, Silent Spring for Silver Spring, the Lighthouse at Alexandria for Alexandria, Tyson Foods for Tysons Corner, and Arlington, TX for Arlington.
Our newsletter title, “Send Small Cities and States IOUs,” is a line from the 2001 song “Area Codes” by Ludacris, wherein Ludacris describes how his paramours are located in many distinct places. The relevant lines:
7-1-8's, 2-0-2's
I send small cities and states I-O-U's
That line comes immediately after Ludacris refers to the 202 area code. The connection was that this was Trivia Newsletter CCII, or “202,” and D.C.’s area code is 202. Your interpretation of whether the federal government (based in D.C., of course) is in the habit of “send[ing] small cities and states I-O-U’s” may depend on your politics.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
Frostbite Falls is the home of Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose, usually just called ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE. Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, the antagonists of the Rocky & Bullwinkle media, are forever trying to “catch moose and squirrel,” and it just occurred to us that they’re referring to Rocky and Bullwinkle’s last names.